Corrinth City: the capital of Kaitain and the seat of the Corrino Empire

Corrinth City, often just Corrinth, was the capital of Kaitain and the administrative centre of the Imperium under House Corrino. Frank Herbert's novels place the Emperor's court on Kaitain without naming its city; the name Corrinth, taken from the house that built it, comes from the expanded books. (Dune; Expanded books: Dune: House Harkonnen)

What was Corrinth City?#

Corrinth City was the chief city and capital of Kaitain, homeworld of the Padishah Emperors, and the place from which the administration of the Imperium was actually conducted. (Expanded books: Dune: House Harkonnen)

Everything imperial ran through it. The Emperor lived there, the Landsraad argued there, the university taught there and the prison held whoever the throne wanted held. (Expanded books: Dune: House Harkonnen)

In Dune, Paul quotes the line "Law is the ultimate science" and notes that it is written above the Emperor's door. The expanded books put it above the entrance to the Great Hall in the Imperial Opal Palace. It's either a statement of principle or a warning, depending on who was standing under it. (Dune; Expanded books: Dune: House Harkonnen)

How the city was built#

Kaitain had been unremarkable. Hassik Corrino III changed that by taxing his subjects nearly into bankruptcy in order to rebuild a governmental infrastructure worth the name. (Expanded books: Dune: House Harkonnen)

The Landsraad supplied the rest without being asked. Its member houses would not be outdone by the imperial house, so they put up monuments of their own, and the competition finished the job inside a generation. What came out of it was a spectacle: imperial architecture, museums and a scale of bureaucratic self-indulgence that had no obvious ceiling. (Expanded books: Dune: House Harkonnen)

Abulurd Rabban, who had grown up between Giedi Prime and Lankiveil, walked through it and was not persuaded. He saw towering government buildings like something out of a drug-induced fantasy, soaring edifices with jewelled inlays and polished slabs of precious stone, colourful chime kites tethered to the towers and writhing on the breeze under a permanently blue sky, prismatic ribbons drifting overhead and throwing rainbows down onto the flagstones. His conclusion was that Kaitain cared about form and not about substance. (Expanded books: Dune: House Harkonnen)

What happened to Corrinth City?#

In Paul of Dune, Fremen troops of the Jihad led by Stilgar sack Kaitain and Corrinth soon after the ascension of House Atreides under Muad'Dib, and many of the capital's grand buildings are wrecked. (Expanded books: Paul of Dune)

Centuries of imperial display made a poor defensive position. When Paul arrives, he lets the Fremen tear down Shaddam's palace, knowing the news will spread as a warning to anyone thinking of rebellion. (Expanded books: Paul of Dune)